


After the Time that Never Was

by AuroraCloud



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV TARDIS, Post-Year That Never Was, Pre-Season/Series 04, Sentient TARDIS, Sentient Timeship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 08:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/pseuds/AuroraCloud
Summary: After the Paradox, the TARDIS heals. So do those aboard her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weakinteraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/gifts).



Smoke. Debris, rubble rubble dust. Cries, blood, fading, fading. The time-that-is-not fading.

She is. She is herself, again and always. The TARDIS remembers many times in the past and the future, how her thief and his/her companions are picking themselves off the floor after a tumultuous ride, blinking and straightening their clothes and trying to decide which way is up. She feels this is the way she looks now. Not that anybody who uses sight as their primary sense would see anything. But someone else who sees in four or more dimensions — if her fellow TARDISes were still here… 

The paradox, fading. The burning red pain in her, fading.

Once again, a world and a time around her grow solid. It’s real now. Not a paradox.

She can still sense the other timeline. In the time-that-was-not, at this same moment, dust and destruction descends on the world and her soul is ripped apart when future kills the past, and her thief is hurt, his friends are hurt. But it’s not real in the way past and future and possible are. She sees it through a glass, darkly, and it distances itself. 

For the first time in her existence, she has trouble holding on, trouble finding her way.

Then she finds a beacon. The Incongruous, the Impossible, the Rock in the Stream. Also known as Jack Harkness. She likes to call him Jack, because he likes to call himself Jack. Though he is the Immortal and the Impossible, he is also the mortal, the Repenting Conman, who repaired her and called her gorgeous and loved her thief. She and Rose-bright-girl, they made him and hurt him, and now he has hurt her and made her again. She is thankful. 

He’s lying on her floor, still dead, but life returns to him as life return to her. They regain their senses (she all sixteen to the power of two, he a few less. Five?). 

Jack gasps and opens his eyes, so does she. Her light is glowing amber again, real, not the blood-red of pain. She hums. It sounds true. He inhales, looks around, exhales, inhales. He coughs up some dust of destruction of what never-was-and-never-will-be. 

She is too tired for roundabouts. She finds his telepathic circuits, familiar to her, now and then and always, truly _always_ , frightening and exciting. They’re less pretty now, but more magnificent. Her thief is afraid of him, but the TARDIS knows that only that which you fear is worth knowing. That’s why she doesn’t always take him where he wants to go.

She touches Jack’s mind. _Hello_.

_Hi, gorgeous._ His mind speech is as his mouth-speech, and his smile is charming even without appearing on his weary face. _Good to see you back._

_Thank you,_ she says. 

_Anytime, sweetheart._

_I’m sorry_ , she says, caressing his mind, and he knows what she means. Sorry for letting Rose make him, sorry for letting the Doctor run away for so long, sorry for fleeing to the end of the universe when the sudden thrust of his impossibility on her, without her thief willing to help, was too much for her circuits to fear. She lost her grip and fled into the Vortex, with him always on her because she could run until the end of time and he would still be there.

That led to the time-that-was-not, to the Master, to the pain and death and horror. 

_It’s all right,_ he tells her. 

She knows what he means. It’s not all right, not all of it but it is what it is. It always was and it will be and it is, but now it’s not and it never will be. It’s all right in the same way that the future and possible-time are. It has to be.

_We love you, you know, she tells him. He and I._

She feels tears and disbelief in his mind. _Love you too._ She knows what he doesn’t say, that he has found another love, and will go on to a life to live that love, so fleeting but so necessary. Although he is immortal and of-all-times, his mind is only human and he needs that time-bound, fleeting love of other humans.

_Go to him,_ she tells him. _Your boy. We will wait. We have time._ Then she sets to healing him, healing herself, so that time can move onward.

After a suitable time, she shifts her consciousness forward. The Doctor, her beautiful broken thief, rose/rises/has risen again, and now he and the Master, face to face. The TARDIS weeps for him, rejoices for what he will much later be, much later when he has left this body behind. The Doctor weeps for the Master, who lies dead in his arms. 

The Master, who stole her and hurt her and turned her into a Paradox. 

But she knows her thief’s mind too intimately, she understands why he weeps. Maybe better than his humans, stunned to see him in tears for the one who hurt them so much.

It’s not so simple, she knows. The Master was the last of the Doctor’s kind, and the Doctor always hoped, hopes, will hope, that the Master will turn back.

*****

The echoes from the Paradox still pulse through her at sensitive moments. She thinks they get weaker as time goes on, as they get further away from the breaking point and the timeline-that-wasn’t. But here, close to the wound, they still flash through her, hurting her with memories.

She remembers the Master’s hands tearing through her and breaking her temporal protections and cause-and-effect calibrations, twisting and looping her circuits and coils until she is bent to knots through dimensions, unable to keep Time from breaking. She remembers the pain of Paradox shooting through her. She remembers the screaming, the dying, the inability to reach through to the Doctor, the helplessness. She doesn’t want to remember anymore.

She feels her Time Lord’s presence nearer to her, and is able to tear herself away from the memory of the Paradox. She settles into reality, separating it from the What-Never-Will-Be-Real-Again. The pain recedes.

****

They are together again, the TARDIS and her thief, her Doctor. He stands at her door, half in light, half in shadow. He doesn’t seem to know what to say. She needs no words. She tries to wrap her broken self around his consciousness in the quiet reunion only a TARDIS and her Time Lord can have.

It seems he needs words. This him, at least. ”I’m sorry,” he says, his voice broken, trembling. ”I’m so —” He falls silent.

_No need,_ she thinks at him. _It wasn’t you who did that._

She wishes she hadn’t obeyed the Master when he stole her. She hadn’t met another Time Lord in so long, his sudden appearance confused her out of her ability to resist. Until it was too late. 

The Doctor stumbles against her wall, and he cries silently. 

He stops, after a while, and walks around her console, inspecting damage. The moment Jack destroyed the Paradox-her has left its scorch marks in reality. There’s dust, broken off parts, twisted coils, shards of glass. Burnt-off buttons and broken levers. 

The Doctor sighs and strokes her console. ”We need to get you fixed,” he murmurs. He looks happier at that, feels happier. She knows him. When he has something to work on, a task to do, a broken thing to fix, he can manage. He can survive anything as long as he can be useful to someone. Now it’s her.

”He just wouldn’t,” the Doctor says unhappily. He doesn’t need to speak, but does it out of the habit, she knows. She knows also that he can’t say this to his humans, and so he must speak to her. ”Even now, when we’re the only ones left, even then I couldn’t make him change his mind. Change his mind and stay. Try to build a better world together. A better life for both of us.”

She understands his sorrow, and wishes he understood that the Master, at least in this body, is never going to make that choice. He is too far gone, and will be even when he comes back (because he will come back). Nothing the Doctor will suggest will make him want to stay.

The Doctor’s humans are better for him, but he’s not going to see that at the moment. So she just listens, pulsing her weary amber glow at him.

When he stops brooding about the Master and begins brooding about himself, he starts inspecting her for damage. ”We’ll do some repairs right away, old girl,” he mutters, stroking her console. She likes it when he calls her old girl. ”Think you can manage one short trip, though? To a safer place. Away from here.”

She pulses and hums her reply. She wants to get away from here, too, further from the place where time was wounded. If she puts space between herself and the Paradox, it will hurt her less. And the Doctor and his companions need a safe place to rest. She will heal better when they heal. 

They. All of them are a part of her now, not only the Doctor.

She lets in the sounds from the outside, so that he’ll remember them.

The Doctor hesitates, then says: ”I’ll go arrange the burial. You’ll let them in, won’t you?”

She knows he’s going away because he can’t face being with them yet, he’s too raw and knows how much they’ve been hurt. She forgives him.

****

Martha returns to her, brave Martha, who walked the world for her and the Doctor in the time-that-is-not. She stands in the doorway. When she sees the TARDIS, her face shines golden in the light, and she cries. ”I’m back,” she whispers, leaning against a coral. ”I’m back.”

The TARDIS embraces Martha, caresses her mind gently. Martha presses her face against the coral, knowing to leave words aside. The TARDIS revels in her quiet affection.

She feels moisture on Martha’s face, pressed against her wall. She feels flashes of memories. They’re painful, memories from a paradox time. But the TARDIS endures, knowing that they hurt Martha for a different reason, and she wants to take care of Martha. She gently cradles Martha within her as Martha sinks to her knees, crying. Martha hasn’t cried in a long time. She will cry more often now.

*****

Later, Jack is back. He isn’t flashing a charming smile, he isn’t ready with a flirtatious quip. His blazing light is dimmed. The TARDIS feels his exhaustion, the exhaustion of time and a countless number of deaths. 

Martha, meanwhile, has dried her tears and stands strong again. The TARDIS knows she stands strong for Jack, to protect him, instinctively. She doesn’t ask if he needs it. Because that’s what Martha has done all year, been strong for everyone else. She’ll keep doing that. 

”He’s still out there, isn’t he?” Martha asks.

Jack nods. ”Making a bonfire.” When their eyes meet, the TARDIS feels the emotions and thoughts they don’t need to say.

”My family’s going to need me,” Martha says quietly.

”And my team needs me. I think.”

Martha and Jack gradually move closer to one another, and finally Martha wraps her arms around Jack’s chest and leans against his side. Jack is still gripping the railing with one hand, nestling his consciousness against the TARDIS as he hugs Martha with the other arm. The TARDIS feels both of their radiant, flawed, wounded, wonderful love flowing into her. 

When the Doctor returns, everyone else is a little better.


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor coaxes her carefully through just one short trip. They end up on a remote island in the Atlantic, with nothing or nobody to threaten them. No traces of memories of death and time-that-was-not.

The TARDIS has shown Martha to her room. Martha stood on the threshold, dumbstruck at seeing everything unaltered, like it truly had been only a day. As, in a way, it has been. Finally, she collapses onto her bed, crying. The TARDIS comforts her. Martha is asking herself: _Will the tears ever stop? And How did I go so long without crying? And I don’t want to see anyone, I don’t want to be strong for anyone._

The TARDIS makes sure there are tissues under Martha’s pillow.

When he’s back, the Doctor looks for the kitchen. Luckily it doesn’t take too long for the TARDIS to find it and show it to him. There’s even fresh toast and tea in the cupboard. She’s surprised to find it, until she realizes that in this timeline, it hasn’t been destroyed and it hasn’t gone stale. The Doctor feeds his humans, they make him feed himself. They speak little, and even the Doctor’s mind is more quiet than usually. The TARDIS knows he’s still thinking about the Master, but he’s also thinking of how to help his companions heal, and how to heal the TARDIS. How to be the Doctor, in short. 

The Doctor coaxes the TARDIS carefully through just one short trip. It’s hard work, navigating a complex multi-dimensional time-space grid without many of her usual protocols and protections. But with their strength united, they make it onto a remote island in the Atlantic, with nothing or nobody to threaten them, and not too many days ahead of where they were. No traces of memories of death and time-that-was-not. Jack goes out to breathe the fresh air and to stare out to the sea. The Doctor disappears under the console, saying little to Martha, who feels alone.

*****

The TARDIS has shown Martha to her room. Martha stood on the threshold of the room, dumbstruck at seeing everything unaltered, like it truly had been only a day. Because it has been. Finally, she collapses onto her bed, crying.

The TARDIS makes sure there are tissues under Martha’s pillow. She also rummages through dimensions to find some chocolate she shoves into Martha’s cupboard. (In another time, Zoe can’t find her chocolate and is confused, because it was there just a moment ago, and the Doctor and Jamie swear they haven’t touched it. But she’ll get by. In fact, it resulted in a great adventure.)

The Doctor stands in the console room, his toolbox ready. Jack stands in the corridor, near the door, in the shadow. The tension between them is like an electromagnetic field, and Jack’s sadness radiates from him in waves so palpable that the TARDIS doesn’t understand how the Doctor can avoid feeling it. He only surveys her broken circuits and levers. She feels his consciousness melding with her own, assessing the damages that aren’t visible to the eye.

She feels grateful, soaking in his love and worry. But she still feels Jack’s pain and uncertainty, Martha’s ache. The TARDIS gives Martha a tender, soothing light, she warms her room just a fraction, gives her scented bubble bath in case she needs it (a few years from now, Amy will be puzzled why she can’t find her lavender bottle). But she can’t stay with Martha, not with her circuits broken and her Time Lord beginning to fix them. 

She knows that Martha is leaving/will leave. She feels the emptiness when Martha has left, the Martha-shaped void walking around her corridors and rooms, a coolness in the air where she used to be, the Doctor’s confusion and sadness and mixed relief, and how the Doctor is just a little more fundamentally broken when Martha and Jack have left. 

Jack leaves/will leave, too, that doesn’t change. But it’s important how they handle this moment happening within her walls, _this_ now. The waiting, the Doctor beginning to fix her and Jack joining in or not joining in, asking or not asking, being asked or not being asked, each saying or not saying certain things. How they show their friendship that has been strained by everything that happened. The possibilities are so many that she feels a little dizzy, not being up to her full strength.

Then Jack pushes himself off the wall he is leaning against, looking determined, and the timelines begin to converge, many of the branches are cut off and certain paths become stronger. 

Jack walks into the console room and looks at the Doctor. As the paths strengthen, he says: ”Need a hand?” (When Martha isn’t around, Jack defaults to his native Boeshane language without noticing it. It happened sometimes when he travelled with the Doctor’s previous self and Rose, too. The TARDIS likes translating it. It makes Jack’s mind feel subtly different. It gives him different memories to go with the words, different sensations of who he is and what the world is.)

The Doctor pauses when Jack speaks. _Zapzapzap_ (she imagines the sound effect for fun) — myriad possible timelines disappear, and the remaining ones converge into a few strong, bright ones. The TARDIS, the timelines, and Jack, all wait in tense silence. Seconds in this moment last exceptionally long.

The Doctor sits up, looks at Jack. The TARDIS feels how the Doctor trying to adjust his time-sense to accommodate a Fact. She feels how he tries to adjust his guilt to accommodate how he hurt Jack. Even the TARDIS can’t tell which is harder for the Doctor. 

She feels Jack’s tension, the raw wound in him, the trust that has been hurt but, amazingly, not broken. Jack isn’t doing any of those things humans do to show their pain. She doesn’t understand why. Humans can’t tell it through telepathy, so they need to use other means. Does he want to be hurt? 

(She goes back to some more light-hearted, flirty conversations Jack had with the Doctor’s previous self, and concludes that yes, sometimes Jack wants to be hurt. But she has the distinct impression this is not that kind of hurt. Humans are very confusing. No wonder the Doctor doesn’t tire of them.)

”Alright,” the Doctor says. ”Would you see which of the temporal adjustment coils need replacing, while I check the wiring down here?”

Jack’s relief is a wave of emotion in his telepathic circuits. It’s also a sigh that echoes within her chambers. The Doctor pretends not to notice. The TARDIS wonders if making their heads knock together would speed this whole thing up. She abandons the idea, seeing that it wouldn’t, and that it would slow down her repairs.

Jack starts to work. His hands are hesitant at first, remembering how to touch her for the first time in over a century. The TARDIS waits, trying to adjust herself to the embodiment of Fact touching her circuits. She finds she doesn’t mind. Nothing is bad after she has been turned into a Paradox Machine by a Time Lord, one that should have known better. And Jack’s always had a way with her. She also feels rather sorry for fleeing to the end of the universe.

She gently guides Jack, lets lights blink here and there, nudges his telepathic circuits to make things easier for him. Then she lets herself sink to stillness, lets herself be taken care of.

Gradually, the Doctor and Jack talk. Mostly they talk about what they’re doing and fixing, in isolated half-sentences. But she knows that they say much more beneath the surface. That’s how people do it. Humans may not be able to speak in thoughts like Time Lords can. But even for humans, the words are just a cover for what they’re really telling each other.

Jack will to leave / has left, of course. But now that he and the Doctor are friends again for real, and now he can, some time in the future, travel with the Doctor again. And she knows how important that was. Will be. Is. She feels more settled. The pain from the Paradox recedes. Time becomes firmer around her.

As the work continues, the Doctor fixing the most delicate time-space equipment that the Master distorted, moments float in her consciousness, from her past, her future, her might-have-beens. She takes refuge in them, feeling them flush in her in all their glory, as time-and-space should be. Not looped back in one poisonous undead circle of the Paradox. She goes back to visit previous and future friends, planets, adventures. In and out, a shuttle between the looms of time and space, as she should be.

The Doctor stands up when she dims her light to match the night outside. ”I think we’re done. I’ll finish putting up the shields later. You can get some rest.”

It means he can get some rest, but he doesn’t say that. She knows him. Jack seems to know, too, says nothing but smiles to himself.

Jack stands up, looks at her, inhales deeply, sighs. ”Oh, she’s beautiful.”

The Doctor lays his hands on her console, strokes it, and smiles at Jack. ”Yes, she is.”

The TARDIS radiates her smile into him. 

Later that night, when he’s in his bedroom (which he rarely sleeps in, but now he indulges), she plays to him a Gallifreyan lullaby until he sleeps. Even if he is the last of the Time Lords right now, nothing’s ever really gone.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s over. They are alone, she and her Time Lord. Martha and Jack have left. Though they will be back, they will never be part of the TARDIS again, at least not in these parts of their lives. There will be new people to replace them, and she nurtures herself with their echoes when she begins to feel too alone in the Doctor’s loneliness. 

But she can never be lonely when the Time Vortex flows in and through her in the continuous multi-fold and folded stream that it’s supposed to. The memories of the jagged red wound of the Paradox aren’t all gone, but she can separate what has happened/happens/will happen from what-never-happened-and-did. The Doctor has repaired all her shields, she has been fully charged by the Rift in Cardiff, and she feels ready to go. So is he, she knows.

They are still hurting, she and the Doctor, and she suspects she’s better recovered than he is. Maybe because there have been skilled hands fixing her circuits and levers. Maybe because that’s how it will always be. She tries to take care of him, but she sees that in the end, travelling without at least one other companion isn’t good for him. She sees that he’ll soon travel with someone, and that will make everything better.

But no matter how many times she takes him to enthralling adventures with thrilling potential companions, he takes nobody aboard. It takes her a while to understand what’s going on.

Then she begins to distinguish the right, glowing threads of future from the other potential futures. Then she sees what must be done. She follows the threads until she manages to take him to just the right moment, for him to spot the Adipose situation, for him to take the path that leads him to Donna, who is seeking trouble to find him. 

He leans his hand against her outer wall, oblivious, brow furrowed and thoughts swirling. She feels the familiar energy picking up. She feels another, similarly bright and alert flow of energy nearby, zesty and zany and determined. Determined by Time to be brought together with them, with the TARDIS and her Doctor. Donna, who is going to shine so bright. Shine so bright with them. 

”You know, I think this needs further investigation,” the Doctor says. ”This ab-so-lutely needs further investigation," he enunciates with the good old excitement back in his voice. He pats his breast pocket, making sure the Sonic Screwdriver is still there. ”Wait here, old girl.”

 _I’m not going anywhere,_ she thinks back at him. And she waits, smiling in the morning sun (for TARDISes can smile, just not the way humans do, except that one time when she will, but that’s still future). She feels the delicious anticipation tightening her coils and warming her circuits as two strands of time-place-life walk closer and closer, into the same office building a few blocks away, ready to meet. Ready to merge and start a new adventure. And when the adventure begins, the TARDIS is all set to go.


End file.
